Helle Oldermand Hagensen’s face turned dark with anger and for a moment the Countess feared she might be having a stroke. She sucked in air, which saved her, however. The Countess wagged her finger again.
“Bear in mind now, a single derogatory comment and you’re out.”
The director turned on her heel and left the room with a red face. The Countess glanced at the young employee and discovered he was grinning from ear to ear. She asked, “Is she always so accommodating?”
“Yikes! You should see her when she really gets going. My wife works at one of the municipal nursing homes… well, obviously it’s in the social services area, and there they really suffer. She just had twelve people fired in Home Health Care at the same time as she is recruiting to build up her own organisation at city hall. She and the two other assholes who are her assis-tants… those three truly understand how to tighten others’ belts nice and snug. On the other hand, she is not particularly competent. I think basically that’s the main reason for her behaviour. But almost the worst thing of all is how she toadies upward. That’s simply unbearable to watch.”
“Well, there are people like that in every walk of life. But we’d better get to work, although-”
The Countess looked around, disheartened.
“-this doesn’t look easy. I hope you have a cataloguing system or I might just as well give up sooner rather than later.”
“Cataloguing system? There’s no such thing down here, but I have something I believe you’ll think is better.”
He fished a USB flash drive out of his pocket and gave it to her.
“What is it?”
“Thirty-eight pictures from the Søndre Strømfjord base, all taken in the first fourteen days of July 1983.The picture you are looking for is number four.”
The Countess was overwhelmed.
“You must be joking? How about that!”
“Yes, but I hope you’ll keep it quiet otherwise she’ll fire me and probably my wife too, if she has a chance.”
“I won’t say a word. So you’ve spoken with the previous museum director?”
“Yes, he told me what you wanted, and where it was.”
“And picture number four-I haven’t told anyone about that.”
“No, but two freelance journalists have been calling around a lot of the people who were on the base in that time, and they’re looking for him so I assumed you were too.”
He removed a photocopy from his wallet and unfolded it. A young, crew-cut man smiled out at them. The Countess asked, “Where did you get this picture from?”
“The journalists visited me at home two days ago. They gave me this, but didn’t say who it is.”
“Did you help them?”
“No, I didn’t much like them, and I also don’t think that murder is entertainment. Poor girl, imagine being killed that way.”
“Well, I can hardly disagree with you about that. May I have that piece of paper?”
“Please, I have no use for it. But who is that really?”
“A man from the Foreign Ministry who has done nothing illegal. Do you know the names of the journalists?”
“No, but one of them left a card. I can call you about it when I get home.”
“Please do. Did they say specifically why they were interested in the man in the picture?”
“No, just like you’re not either.”
A paranoid thought suddenly struck the Countess.
“The former museum director, why was he discharged?”
“Hmm, that’s a very long story, and there are many truths in that matter, but it has nothing to do with these pictures, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Okay. I didn’t really think it had.”
“Basically it was bad luck for all of us. There was no one like him for telling tall tales from Greenland; all kinds of delightful stories, some of them even true. Now the whole thing has been made the responsibility of the Agency for Cultural Heritage and various museum politicians, but the majority of visitors here are regular people, and they would rather hear the tall tales.”
“Do you know any of them?”
“Lots, but I’m no good at telling them. Not as good as my former boss anyway.”
“But you practise?”
The man blushed.
“Yes, a little. For my own amusement.”
The Countess glanced at the window, where the rain had started to drum against the glass. It was no weather to go out in. So she looked at her watch and said, “Why don’t you tell me a story?”
CHAPTER 27
The weather changed on Saturday afternoon. The sultry heat that had settled over Copenhagen was released in thunderstorms and rain as the train approached Roskilde. Pauline Berg found the outburst liberating, although it made no difference in the coach where her clothes still clung to her body. She looked out of the window and saw the faraway cathedral with its twin towers lit by sharp flashes of lightning under the leaden sky. Shortly after that the rain hit the train and obscured the view.
For a while she observed the irregular tracks of the water down the window and wondered why some drops remained in place while others pelted across the glass at a furious speed. Then she turned towards her neighbour and fellow passenger. He was a soldier, and in Copenhagen she had just beaten him in the race to get to the window seat first. Since then he had tried to initiate a conversation the whole way, but she had rejected him with monosyllabic answers or else simply ignored him. Now he was one of the first passengers to stand up, obviously eager to get away. She smiled at him, which she had otherwise been careful not to do during the journey, and noticed how he considered sitting down again. It remained just a thought, however. He returned the smile and left.
Roskilde station was the oldest in the country. Opened in 1847, it was constructed to serve Denmark’s first railway between Copenhagen and Roskilde. Pauline Berg had prepared herself on the Internet. On Saturday, 5 April, 1997 just after nine o’clock, Catherine Thomsen arrived on the regional train from Copenhagen. Several other passengers had seen her and could confirm that she was travelling alone. In Roskilde she got off at platform one, closest to the station, which was also confirmed by witnesses. From here she would take a short walk through a tunnel that led under the tracks and up on to platform six, where the train to Næstved by way of Haslev would arrive in seven minutes. No passengers had seen her on the Næstved train, and most likely she never got on. The weather that day had been rainy and windy with temperatures in the mid-forties. So it was unlikely that she left the station area, unless she had an errand to run.
Pauline Berg followed in Catherine Thomsen’s footsteps five times. Slowly and systematically she wandered from one platform, down through the tunnel and up on to the other, as she tried to take in everything around her at the same time. The rain was splashing down, and the butterfly roofs of the platforms provided only partial protection. Her jeans were wet, but she was too preoccupied to notice.
In 1997 Andreas Falkenborg owned a silver-grey Saab 900. He might have parked either in front of or behind the station area. But what could persuade a twenty-two-year-old woman to interrupt her journey and follow a middle-aged man to his car? Seen from Falkenborg’s point of view, this place was almost the worst imaginable if he was going to use violence or threats. There were far too many witnesses around. Pauline sat down in the station cafeteria with a cup of coffee and cemented the conclusion she had reached several days ago: Andreas Falkenborg and Catherine Thomsen already knew each other. But an acquaintanceship did not fully explain the circumstances either. The two platforms and tunnel were a strange setting in which to feign a coincidental meeting and offer a ride. The sequence of events only made sense if they had a prior agreement. If Catherine Thomsen of her own free will had gone to Falkenborg’s car, where he sat waiting for her.